Inheritance and wealth inequality: Evidence from population registers

Elinder, Mikael; Erixson, Oscar; Waldenström, Daniel

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.06.012

Cited by 90 publications

(92 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…52 I restrict my focus to heirs in the main sample, excluding the 2005 cohort in order to avoid the impact of the tax repeal. 53 A similar strategy is used by Elinder et al (2016) to study the effect of inheritance on wealth inequality. 54 The identification assumption that needs to be fulfilled for the estimate to be consistent is that the outcome would have evolved similarly for the two cohorts had they not inherited.…”

Section: A Comparison Between the Effect Of The Inheritance Shock Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While the lack of an effect of the shock for the two lowest quartiles may be a consequence of the shock being too small to have any implications, it is more difficult to explain why the largest shocks have no impact. Wealthy heirs, as compared to poor, tend to receive larger inheritances in absolute terms; however, as a fraction of their wealth, the inheritances are typically relatively small (Wolff 2002;Elinder et al 2016). To investigate whether the inheritance shock matters more for the relatively poor than for the relatively wealthy, I test for heterogeneous responses across the distribution of the inheritance scaled by initial wealth.…”

Section: Heterogeneous Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Health responses to a wealth shock: evidence from a Swedish tax reform

Erixson

2017

J Popul Econ

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This paper makes two contributions to the literature on the effects of wealth on health. First, it deals with reverse causality and omitted variable bias by exploiting exogenous variation in inherited wealth generated by the repeal of the Swedish inheritance tax. Second, it analyzes responses in health outcomes through the use of administrative registers. The results show that increased wealth has limited short to medium run impacts on objective adult health. This is in line with what has previously been reported in the literature.

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Section: A Comparison Between the Effect Of The Inheritance Shock Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Heterogeneous Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Health responses to a wealth shock: evidence from a Swedish tax reform

Erixson

2017

J Popul Econ

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“…Using population-wide register data on inheritances and wealth in Sweden, Elinder, Erixson, and Waldenström (2016) also find that inheritances reduce relative inequality but increase the absolute dispersion of wealth. Such a discrepancy between relative and absolute effects arises because while wealthier individuals inherit larger amounts, less-wealthy individuals receive much larger inheritances relative to their preinheritance wealth.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…If the rich are more likely than the poor to save their inheritances instead of spending them, as noted by Wolff (2002) and Elinder, Erixson, and Waldenström (2016), we may observe a higher correlation between the bequest propensities of parents and children among wealthy households than among less-wealthy households. While there are a number of studies that examine the degree of correlation between the level of parents' wealth and that of children's wealth (i.e., intergenerational wealth mobility) (e.g., Charles and Hurst 2003), there has been limited work examining the intergenerational correlation of bequest propensities.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Such a discrepancy between relative and absolute effects arises because while wealthier individuals inherit larger amounts, less-wealthy individuals receive much larger inheritances relative to their preinheritance wealth. In addition to this direct effect of inheritances, Elinder, Erixson, and Waldenström (2016) examine the behavior-adjusted effect of inheritances, which captures the behavioral change of heirs in response to the receipt of inheritances. They find that less-wealthy heirs tend to consume a larger share of their inherited wealth than wealthier heirs and that these behavioral adjustments, in turn, dilute the equalizing impact of inheritances.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Impact of Intergenerational Transfers on Household Wealth Inequality in Japan and the United States

Niimi

Horioka

2017

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in Asian Development Bank InstituteThe Working Paper series is a continuation of the formerly named Discussion Paper series; the numbering of the papers continued without interruption or change. ADBI's working papers reflect initial ideas on a topic and are posted online for discussion. ADBI encourages readers to post their comments on the main page for each working paper (given in the citation below). Some working papers may develop into other forms of publication. The views expressed in this paper are the views of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of ADBI, ADB, its Board of Directors, or the governments they represent. ADBI does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this paper and accepts no responsibility for any consequences of their use. Terminology used may not necessarily be consistent with ADB official terms.Working papers are subject to formal revision and correction before they are finalized and considered published. AbstractTo help shed light on the implications of intergenerational transfers for wealth inequality, this paper uses data for Japan and the United States to examine whether individuals who receive intergenerational transfers from their parents are more likely to leave bequests to their children than those who do not. The estimation results show that the receipt of intergenerational transfers from parents and/or parents-in-law increases the likelihood of individuals leaving bequests to their children in both Japan and the United States, which in turn is likely to contribute to the persistence or widening of wealth disparities. However, such a tendency is found to be stronger among less-better-off households in both countries, and this may help alleviate the disequalizing effect of intergenerational transfers on the distribution of wealth, at least to some extent.

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Wealth Inequalities

König

Schröder

Wolff

2020

Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics

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In many countries, wealth is highly concentrated, much more so than income. This review presents the long run trend of wealth inequality since the 1990s. Subsequently, it discusses the multitude of available datasets documenting and investigating wealth inequality and then critically evaluates the benefits and drawbacks of each. Following, an overview on descriptive studies of wealth inequality with a focus on augmented and pension wealth, portfolio composition, and intergenerational transmission is provided. Finally, the review details developments in structural models that explain the concentration of wealth. The evidence points to a sharp rise of wealth inequality beginning in the early 1990s through the mid-2010s in the United States. However, recent trends differ, for example, for Sweden and the United Kingdom. The last two decades have witnessed a virtual explosion of datasets on household wealth, including, notably, new internationally conformable databases such as the World Inequality Database, the Luxembourg Wealth Study Database, the Household Finance and Consumption Survey, and new administrative data from Nordic countries. The possibility to combine different datasets via record linkage or statistical matching further enlarges their research potential. Several new studies have expanded the concept of wealth from conventional marketable wealth to augmented wealth including pension and social security wealth. On the theoretical front, new modeling approaches have been devised to account for the extreme skewness in wealth distributions, including the introduction of heterogeneous rates of return by wealth class.

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Inheritance and wealth inequality: Evidence from population registers

Cited by 90 publications

References 56 publications

Health responses to a wealth shock: evidence from a Swedish tax reform

Health responses to a wealth shock: evidence from a Swedish tax reform

The Impact of Intergenerational Transfers on Household Wealth Inequality in Japan and the United States

Wealth Inequalities

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